Fourteen Years in Love
by Bildungsroman
Summary: They're surrounded by something beautiful, shrewd, and ignorant. It could be love.
1. Chapter 1

**Fourteen Years in Love**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but my words. The characters and world belong to Square-Enix.**

Before there was love, there were strollers in the park. More specifically in the late afternoon shade of May thirtieth in a small park next to a bench, there was a stroller holding a small infant, babbling soundly as its mother bundled the blankets about the babe a little tighter to block out the chill of the wind from the later days of a oddly cold spring day.

Mrs. Rebecca Lockhart smiled softly as she gently hummed her baby girl a lullaby: the child's sparse tuft of dark brown hair blowing slightly in the breeze as she blew lip bubbles to her own great amusement.

"Gah! Gah," the infant declared, smiling a toothless grin while her mother nodded in agreement.

"Very 'gah', in fact, the most 'gah' day we've had so far," she said as she reached out to flatten the messy mop of hair on her baby girl's head. She looked up the little path on the park. The sun was dropping lower in the sky, and sporadic cover a trees in the park was making the air colder by the minute. Suddenly, she heard a soft beat of footsteps coming from behind her and, turning with a slight furrow of curiosity in her brow, was delighted to see her next door neighbor waving shyly as she balanced her own child on her hip.

"Lily," Becca said, grinning. "I didn't expect to see you here! How are you?" She laughed as she watched Lily deal with her own squirming son as he twisted around in her grip. His blues eyes wide with wonder, he stuck out a hand a waved it ecstatically in her face.

"Bye, bye!" he declared. Becca laughed again, bemused by how adorable he was. Lily sighed and shrugged, slightly embarrassed.

"He just learned the word. Now it's his favorite. He said it to at least twenty people on our walk. Or, in his case, our carry. " Her son took a strand of hair and tugged. She winced. "But, never mind that. How are you? I haven't really seen you since you were pregnant! What's her name?" she asked, looking at the stroller where the baby girl was looking at her with very wide, newborn dark blue eyes.

"Tifa," Becca said, and said Tifa turned to her mother and declared another delighted 'gah' at the mention of her name. "And she is almost a month old, aren't you?" She poked the baby girl on the nose and causing her to laugh soft, baby giggles.

"And look at this big boy! You've gotten huge, you little, big man!" Becca smiled and took his still outstretched hand.

"Eight months…he's crawling, mobile, talking, and has made it his personal mission to stick anything and everything into his mouth that even remotely resembles food" Lily murmured.

"Cute mop of hair he has." Becca grinned and pointed to the odd array of blonde spikes shooting in every direction. By now, the baby boy had lost all interest in the two adults and turned his attention to the fussing, squirming bundle in the stroller next to Mrs. Lockhart. Tifa wasn't too keen on her mother paying not attention to her at least once per minute, and her little baby face contorted in a determined scowl.

"Baby!" The two women looked as a chubby, spiky, baby boy pointed his finger at the scowling bunch of blanket and baby below his. He grinned, showing off a fair amount of tiny teeth, obviously pleased with his discovery and his ability to show the world around him.

His mother laughed. Babies make everything want to laugh. "Very good Cloud, she is a baby just like you're a baby."

Cloud decided to emphasis his statement. "Baby," he declared once more.

Becca reached out and lifted her daughter out of the stroller, carefully holding her soft skin of her fragile head and making sure the blankets stayed securely around her little girl. Tifa cooed and wriggled one delicate arm out of the tangle of fuzzy warmth to stretch it as far as she could into the air to try to touch her mothers face.

"You want to see the baby, Cloud?" Becca asked him, rocking the giggling Tifa as she successful caught a strand of her mother's hair in her tiny, pudgy fingers. Lily sat down next to Becca and balanced her still slightly wobbly boy on her knee.

"This is Tifa, sweetie. No touching, okay? She's very little. Little things can get hurt easily," Lily stated firmly.

Cloud paid no attention to the two adults though. He at the newborn in front of him, the clump of dark hair on her head, her little arm batting at her mother's long hair like a kitten does with string, and grinned each time she laughed at her own game. He grinned so wide that the dimples showed in his big cheeks and the crooked baby teeth showed in his pink, pink gums. He reached out a hand while the two mothers settled back into conversation with each other.

He blinked, shocked when the baby girl gripped one of his outstretched fingers and shouted a happy 'gah'.

Lily and Becca noticed their children, and Lily chided him softly. "No, no, Cloud. No, let go."

Cloud looked at him mother, understanding the phrase, and tugged his finger. Tifa scowled and tightened her grip, unwilling to give up her newfound playmate. Cloud tried again, nothing worked. "No! Baby bad! No!" he said and pulled again.

"Tifa, sweetie, no, no. Let go," Becca said and tried to pull her daughters little fingers off the little boy. The little girl's baby face furrowed further into her scowl. Her mother succeeded in pulling her tiny fingers off of Cloud's. Promptly, Tifa started to cry, not at all pleased with the loss of her new friend.

"Oh, dear, someone is tired and fussy. We should go," Becca said, shushing the crying daughter, as Lily nodded in understanding the antics of babies and their mood swings.

"Okay, say 'Bye, bye', Cloud." Lily said, making a move to stand, but not before her little son shouted a very firm, "No!"

And it was then that the two mothers watched as a very pudgy, very young man leaned over with his still developing child muscles, kissed the palm of his small hand, and planted it on the forehead of the screaming infant. "Good baby, nice baby," he said.

Lily smiled, waved goodbye to her neighbor, and started walking back to her home. "My sweet little man," she said and kissed her son on his cheek.

Becca waved too, and looked at her daughter who was no longer crying, just sniveling quietly, red eyed, and reaching out her mother's hair once again.

Before the sharpening edges and leather gloves, shot glasses and mako leaking from the streets, there was something simple and earnest. The world surrounding wasn't tragically beautiful, shrewd, or ignorant, and Tifa's fists were too soft to punch the hell out of a drunken patron. And Cloud's eyes were only blue with no rings of green. Somewhere later, much later, there's love. Fourteen years in love.

**To Whom It May Concern: That was horrendously long and dull. Hopefully, I can make the story pick up more as it progresses. Thank you for reading. I hope that it's worth your while. If not, please tell me. I can take the fire.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: Thank to everyone who read and/or reviewed the last chapter. You're all snazzy, and I hope to get back to each of you soon. Once again, thanks for being awesome.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but my words. The characters and world belong to Square-Enix.**

Years away, Tifa dreams of Eden and misses it pathetically—its great maw left nestled in the mountains where the fires burned it down, home and wishing well now dirt and mud—and wonders what she's to do with herself now.

At nineteen, she is on the verge of killing for the first time and cannot quell the eerie howl in her chest. Despite the hate for Shrina she still harbors in the pit of her stomach and the monster in the back of her head purring in delight, she cannot help but hesitate—fist locked in uncertainty at her side and eyes darting to where Barret has blown a gaping hole in one guard's face—when the reactor's guard swings his sword high above his head.

Barret shouts a hoarse, "What the hell are you doin', girl? Get 'im!" She has only known him for three weeks—having met him after kicking a particularly grabby costumer through the front door of the bar, leaving splinters in the leech's skin and fear in his eyes—but she trusts him, slightly.

She tightens her fist. In Midgar, slightly is just enough.

Her muscles tense; her punch lands right on the guard's jaw line, and she hears a distinct crack. She has broken his neck completely, so that it rolls grotesquely around until the body slumps, knees first, to the ground and crumbles into a heap. Blood begins to seep from its mouth.

A siren whirs in the back of her head, signaling that the reinforcements have been called well before she, Barret, and Biggs have even reached the core of the reactor. And red lights flash above the trio causing Barret to curse under his breath, hoist the bomb on his shoulder, and order them to run for it.

"Fucking ambush," Barret seethes as they round a corner with half a squadron on their heels, bullets clipping the leather on the bottom of her boots.

Later on while turning empty chairs onto the table tops at closing time, she promises to never kill again, but then she moves upstairs in the dark, floorboards straining beneath her weight and paint peeling on the ceiling, towards her own room in the very back of the hall. And she hears it: tiny Marlene cooing softly in her sleep and arms probably winding around that pink blanket she's so fond of, so she reconsiders and her fingers brush the gloves hanging at her side.

Her muscles are screaming she lethargically drags her feet about her room. A mirror hangs above her mantle, and she hums as she catches a glimpse at her reflection: hair matted, bags under her eyes folding into one another, and a couple cuts coated in dried blood on her arms.

And she's torn. Wondering when she got so old, she attempts a smile and shudders at how disturbing that looks. Gaunt content is an oxymoron she just can't stomach today, and when she reaches out to splay her hands on the glass, the dirt beneath her fingernails seems to cackle as a constant reminder of the sewers she must crawl through from now on.

Breathing the sour scent of the city air blowing in from the window, she reminds herself that this is home. Suck it up or die.

But, that doesn't stop the insanity she's sure that she's on the brink of.

She hates that she woke up alone in a hospital in Midgar at fifteen, a newly formed clot crackling all down her front and bleeding with a new fervor as the stiches strained from where Sephiroth's blade had cut her.

Hates that she was homeless at sixteen and digging spoiled food out of the trash cans only to be chased off by angry shop owners when she was just trying to survive.

Hates the uncertainty she felt at seventeen when the only job she seemed suited for was a barmaid in a run down restaurant, and the satisfaction she felt at eighteen to buy it and say it was hers. She owned something. She went home somewhere.

And as she hunches over in bed, she clicks her tongue at the thought that she what she is doing is right. The pain in her knuckles relentless from six days of constant missions and knowing it's worth it to see the happy crease in Marlene's forehead when there's a huge, ragtag family coming home each night. Alive. A throb pulsing, growing, and fading in her skull throughout the day from the clinking of glasses, but deciding that's alright if she can make one of her patrons smile in the smallest way.

She pinches the bridge of her nose and looks out her open window—the dirt on the roads and the metal almost passing as storm clouds above—just to avoid the monster pacing the pit of her stomach and clawing its walls every so often.

Tifa killed someone and, a year into adulthood, understands the weight of that responsibility.

And even though the city's moral compass is roughly guided enough to lead a person to a whorehouse on a Sunday, Tifa still begins to cry in convulsing spasms. The city might be rotton, but she can't afford to be. She _really_ hates herself at times like these. She's a disgusting cretin pulling strands of infected muscle whenever she lets a wound fester for too long. She's an idiot for thinking there's a way out of this godforsaken hole of a place.

_He probably had a family. He could have had children,_ she thinks—the latter thought striking her the hardest—and she sobs harder. She deepens the crease in her forehead and fists clumps of her hair.

She imagines it's the grudge. It's the love she also felt for her father, Zangan, Zack, and Cl-

She doesn't know what to do with that thought. All at once, it feels like a bit of her heart has shut down. Blood tried valiantly to pump new life into it, but to no avail. She hasn't seen him in such a long time. What's the use the use in dreaming of imaginary specters to haunt her head?

However, the part that frightens her the most is the indecision, the monster in her stomach growing multiple heads and muscles flexing with each passing moment. In the few weeks of their living here, Tifa loves them all: Barret, Jessie, Biggs, Wedge, and Marlene. She may not trust them, not yet, but she loves them none the less. She loves Jessie's companionship, Barret's huge laugh that could wake half the continent, Biggs's steadfast want to help, Wedge's mustered courage on missions, and Marlene's automatic love and trust in Tifa. The monster loyally promises to mutilate whoever puts a bullet or sword in their backs, but it also purrs like a kitten at the thought of each Shrina accomplice it will rip in half.

And it's at that moment she realizes that, if she were still alive, her mother would hate her too.

The blood in her knuckles would revolt her, as would the life she had been reduced to. Not even Tifa's desire to stand strong and bring love, life, or some variant of hope back to the world could salvage her in her mother's eyes. She thinks.

Tifa bites her lip to force the vomit back down her throat.

* * *

Miles away, Cloud dreams in snatches and neutral pigments of his eroding memories. The acid-like fluid floating about his body has coated the inside of his mouth and filled his retinas with a slow burn that has lasted for four years. The veins on his arms have swelled to welts and tumors, and they glow mako green while quivering like a heartbeat.

Before him, his captor peers through the glass with a morbid fascination and giggles. Even through half-lidded eyes and the fluid coating the glass, Cloud can see his teeth are a stark yellow.

Hojo raps his knuckles on the glass. In response to the vibration, Cloud's eyeball dislodges and hangs like a pendulum in the acid.

"Oh ho!" Hojo says, chuckling. "Might have to fix that!" Satisfied with what he has found, he pivots on his heel and moves deeper into the lab.

Cloud can't remember anything beyond the metal walls of the lab. He can't remember the man floating in a tank next to him whose head has lolled back as a couple chords pump a black fluid into his neck.

Cloud doesn't remember home or houses, his mother's hands nor the wrinkles setting at the edges of her eyes from her loneliness after he left. Who's to say if he remembers a word for 'mother' at all?

But, when he closes his eyes, he sees the fraying ends of an era as a little village erupts in flames. Wood splinters at charred angles, and he's certain he hears a baby being slaughtered to death somewhere in the distance by a long and sunken, silver figure. It's moments like these where he wishes he could control his slumped sack of skin, wake himself up, or scream.

He imagines that if he could mimic the screams he hears in these dreams, it might convey the gnaw in his heart, and he'd be satisfied.

It's at that moment that the air tight glass in front of him hisses and shrinks away, causing the acid to rush out in a wave, his body to lurch forward, the IVs in his back to be torn out from the weight, and his cheek to meet the floor. He wants so much to scream.

Hojo hovers over him, poking him with a thin, long, chipped nail. The places where the IVs were are now bleeding, and Hojo makes a mental note to study how the wounds heal themselves for the sake of his research.

From his crumpled position, Cloud registers the change in temperature: the cool floor colliding with the muggy sag in the air. As he revels in his new discovery, Hojo sticks a needle full of glowing mako into Cloud's bicep, and he flinches, shudders as the substance courses through his system.

Hojo gives a curt nod to one of the assistants in the corner, whose eyes are wide with horror.

"You!' Hojo barks. "Here. Now."

The assistant nods stupidly, unable to tear his gaze away from the dangling pieces of tissue where a bit of Cloud's back should be. Though, fearing the look of seriousness on Hojo's face, he comes and begins to struggle with lifting the test subject back into the chamber.

"Friend's turn!" Hojo says happily. He presses a release button on the tank next to Cloud's, and a tall, dark haired man slumps to the ground just as his blond haired counterpart did, neck bleeding from where the IVs tore out.

"…Aeri…Clo…" he murmurs incoherently before going mute with fatigue.

The glass seals once more, and Cloud is left to hover in acid. The mako reacts poorly with his system, and he vomits. It floats just below him now. He's been swimming in his own bile for years.

A part of his mind buzzes though, conjuring up fantasies that he's not sure if they exist. He likes this. It's his only like. In an instant, something flashes before his eyes. Something with hands, hands developing calluses and new blisters with an image of dark brown dangle above them.

"See, Cloud? Already torn up, aren't they?" A feminine giggle, and the dream is done.

But that doesn't stop him from muttering into the night, much to Hojo's fascination. A repeated phrase of "…fa…ifa….fa….fa….ifa…." until even that fades, and his mind goes blank.

**To Whom It May Concern: I do hope that this chapter pick up the story a little more than the last. This is really where the story begins, and the previous chapter is more of a prologue, in a sense. Thank you for reading, I hope it was worth your time.**

**Read and review, if you feel so inclined. Constructive criticism is lovely, but I can take the flames too. **


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: Special thanks to vLuna, Iskra revoir, kitsune13, Writer Chica (whom I agree with as the chapter was rather disgusting), mom calling, and Kisdota-The Freak Gamer for leaving such great feedback. I've never gotten so many reviews in such a short amount of time, and it's nice to know that I've managed to write something of some substance. It makes an awkward, literary nerd proud.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but my words. The characters and world belong to Square-Enix.**

Two miles into the world and Cloud's vision hazes in murky brush strokes against the coming world. He lifts his head and haphazardly wipes away the sweat that clings to his eyelashes and burns his eyes from his body's exertion.

His throat is dying, screeching with each inhale of the swirls of coiling, picturesque dust that blew high into the atmosphere to leave him in his pain. The smudges on his face that once presented a startling contrast to the brightness of his eyes have merely come to resemble bruises as his retinas dim further and further with each inhale of the sweltering air. Zack's blood from when he pulled the young blond to his chest as he lay dying has dried in Cloud's hair, and it crinkles and cracks little flecks whenever the wind howls.

His muscles tense, and the fibers strain. He doesn't know why it's so damn hard to remember the reason for this journey. The reason his willpower is set on the looming structure of metal arches and industry in the distance and hues of green and blue illuminating the sky in great bursts that the city produces.

It's then that Cloud scoffs—a memory fluttering that the mako slowly poisoning his system has yet to kill—and remembers Zack.

Zack, whose memory Cloud's lethargic movements and weakness are disgracing. Zack, whose massive sword is now strapped to the young blonde's back although it's far heavier than his fatigue and ebbing dementia can hold upright.

He carries in the moment the overwhelming guilt that is fresh in his mind. Zack's death was mere hours ago, and what little of a reminiscence Cloud can spare, he spends on the responsibility of Zack's sword. When he had been a young recruit—all big ears, flimsy shoulders, and underwhelming frailty—Cloud had dreamed of wielding a weapon to be proud of, much like the gleaming metal and razor edge of his friend's blade.

But now—with his arms giving out from over-exertion so that the sword's tip trailing the dust at his heels—even the sheer weight of the blade is nothing like his old dreams. The blisters from holding the hilt begin developing new areas to callous on his hands. He can't remember a pain—subtle and relentless—like this.

But, he moves on, lifting his feet, though the sores now rubbing raw in his boots are soon to burst. There had to be hope in this. He had to find something, beyond the desert. Beyond the cracks in this dirt. For chrissake, back to each tree and flower and drop of water he'd taken for granted in his life. His mother's feather blond hair and the clumsy piano melodies floating into his bedroom from the house next door.

And all at once, the chemicals rushing in his veins seep up to coat every tube, ventricle, and surface in his body. And his mind is on fire. A torrent rushes through his blood, and his brain goes into overdrive as the dull throb at the base of his neck escalates into near suffocation.

His pupils dilate into slits. His mouth, suddenly wet, sputters concerns and worries that come out in incoherent babbles.

_Something's wrong. Something's wrong._

And it's fading. A bright yellow rushes by his eyes, and his mother's delicate hands are gone, replaced by the hands of a mad man curling about his throat, laughing in contempt.

_Everything is wrong. Stop, Cloud. Stop, Shinra._

Nibelheim goes up in smoke. And there's something more. He can't quite get it right, but the skin that's covering his body doesn't feel right. That isn't his hand through his hair, nor his laugh, nor his eyes reflecting in the glow of mako mutated test tube subjects as Sephiroth's face contorts in horror and comprehension.

He's on his knees, breathing shallow and rasping breaths of hot dirt, and he feels like crying. One battered, starved part of his conscience whimpers at the loss of his sanity and the loss of the memories that had slowly trickling in like holy water when Zack saved him from that lab. He crawls—one joint after the other—as a wave of emotion floods him with a fervent desire that died filled with lead on the hill top. His thoughts are obliterated into millions of fragments. How can he hope to salvage his identity?

_She's waiting in Midgar. It has to be Midgar. Go to Midgar._

This isn't him. He has no one in the poverty and electric-mako currents of the city's streets. In his twenty-first year, he'd seen enough of the world to surely remember what's his?

Though Zack is dead, his ideals are living and engulfing the young blond with uncertainty and aggression. Cloud rises from his knees to walk, but his shoulders stoop, so, goblin-like, his back arches, and his soles shuffle the dry earth beneath him.

When he reaches the outskirts of the train station, the slits in his eyes and the metal in his fist frighten the people about him. Though Cloud doesn't know, he knows nothing but the rusting platform beneath his feet and the switching pictures of places he's never seen and a title—_"SOLDIER! First Class, mind you!"_—he's never held. Very familiar dreams that are off by margins and time skews.

"_If you see Aerith"—_Tifa—"_ say hi for me. Hey, would you say... I became a hero?"_

He drags himself onto the train—eyes lolling back in his head—and slumps onto the bench. His body relaxes into the plastic of the seats, and he watches the sky roll by. His body spasms every few minutes, frightening the other passangers until the train car has cleared of all but him. He vomits once, twice, on the floor and wonders what he's to do with himself now. His eyelids begin to weigh down as he lets out an incessant moan of question with each new memory that flits across his eyes.

"_My honor…my dreams…"_

Some rain begins to splatter is soft 'plinks' and 'plops' on the windows. Another surge of chemicals courses and mixes from the bits of his bones to the pits of his still breathing lungs, and he screams, clutching fists of hair as the pain wracks his mind with convulsions.

"_They're yours now…"_

Cloud mashes his teeth and tries to breathe. "Get…out…get…out…not mine…not-"

His body, finally exhausted of all its worth, blackens all around him. Limbs blurring and senses numbing, and he smiles with a morbid fascination. This might be the end, and he's not sure how he feels about that.

Vaguely, he registers the looming structure approaching ahead and blinks in recognition when a layer of shadow engulfs the train, slowly swallowing the compartment as they pass under the massive plate, and the florescent lights flicker on and off in the dark.

* * *

Hours from seeing bits and pieces of her past, Tifa can take care of her own goddamn self, as she reminds Barret when he bars the door with one massive arm one night as she tries to go out to clear her head.

"You ain't goin'. There's some real messed up folk out there just waitin' to find someone to-"

"Luckily, I don't have any intention to end up as the victim of some drug-induced massacre," she says, giving him a indignant scowl.

"Don't be funny," he says, pointing his gun-arm at her. "I'm serious. They're SOLDIERS out there, and they got the stuff in them. Messin' up their heads and making them just monsters."

She understands the significance of that fact. She'd seen them with glowing eyes, and they might as well be monsters when sticking katanas in innocent people and silhouetted by a wall of fire. With a mind of its own, the scar on her chest burns and prickles nostalgically.

"Barret, I know SOLDIERS, okay? I don't need lectures on those…" not monsters, but she can't find the right word. "Men. Yeah, but, please, trust me."

"It's not you I don't trust! It's-"

"Them," she finishes. Reaching out, she places a hand—leather glove and all—on his arm. "I've been here for five years, and four of those were without you or anyone. Just…I don't know…I'll be back in an hour. I just want to walk and clear my head from this day. It's been hectic with all the patrons. I need to just think about nothing for a bit."

Barret growls and raises his arms to clearly say, _Fine, obviously my opinion doesn't matter_. He stomps off, sending huge vibrations through the creaking wood floors and up the walls of the bar, punches the pinball machine, and sinks to the depths below the bar.

She pinches the bridge of her nose and turns to leave, hand just ghosting the door knob when she hears a little noise.

"Tifa?" Her eyes prick at the little noise—mumbling and sleepy—coming from the bottom of the steps. Marlene is there in her pink pajamas, clutching a stuffed Moogle and lazily rubbing her eyes with tiny, soft, baby fists. Tifa smiles slightly and goes down on one knee, already holding her arms open for the little girl to come to, which she does, lazily shuffling over and wrapping her chubby arms around Tifa's neck.

"Marlene, sweetie, did we wake you?" Marlene nods her head slowly, her mouth opening for a gaping yawn. "I'm so sorry, hon."

"You know, if you wanna think, we can just put our thinking caps together like this," she says matter-of-factly, and reaches out to tug Tifa's head down so that their foreheads touch. Marlene screws up her face in concentration, and Tifa can't help but laugh. "There," Marlene says, grinning, "I helped!"

"Very good," Tifa murmurs while walking back up the stairs and tracing the banister with her free hand as they ascend. "But now you have to go to bed. Just like I have to go run errands."

"Tifa…" Marlene starts, but a huge yawn interrupts her. "Will you tell me a story? One where everything is happy and romantic when it's over?" The young woman's eyes soften, and she murmurs a quiet acquiescence, but the little girl is already fast asleep in her arms.

It's raining; she's sure of it. An hour on, she stands in the an alley of sector seven watching a slight trickle of water steadily drip from a groove or hole in the plate above and collect into a tiny puddle. And for a moment, she laughs, pleased by the absolute normality of a rainstorm that not even mako and industry can block it out.

She keeps her eyes down in the streets, wanting no attention and no fist-fights tonight. And though the leather covering her hands is comforting, the odd array of stumbling passersby and the green glow of the mako lamps above create a different, metal, polluted wild that she cannot but fear.

But that's just her. The fear is always whirring and clawing the sides of her mind. She worries about the incessant ticking of each bomb they place on a reactor and Barret's barking orders that if they don't get out within eight minutes, they will die. She worries about the guards that come and sit at her counter every night while sweat collects at the base of her neck in fear that somehow someone knows the terrorist that she is. Worries when Biggs has a bullet in his back, and she has to dig it out with a table knife turned makeshift scalpel.

And walking out of a bookshop she seems to have wandered into with a small, dogged-eared fairy tale collection, she worries that she's torn, not knowing whether to afford Marlene the luxury of delusions of grandeur or help her grow up in a reality she never had to face herself as a child. She flips the novel in her hand, skimming pages and finding the likes of "The Glass Coffin" and "Death's Messengers". Her brow furrows in annoyance, and she curses that even the make believe has nothing to believe in anymore. That can't be. Tifa has to have something to hold onto, or she'll lose her mind.

The dirt of the slums shifts to the cobblestones of the train station, and her heart tugs in her ribcage. She usually avoids this place, but her path home crosses it. She hates its misery.

Beggars, the sick, and the lame lay about in odd, distorted positions. Most are filthy and most are either mute or just dead, except the select few who babble at strangers their life stories or ask for money. Though she tries to keep her eyes on the ground, every so often she meets eyes with one of them, and out of the guilty flush on her face, gives them what little bits of gil she has.

Two guards are walking about, kicking bodies with disgust to see if their dead. They speak to each other in hushed tones and kneel every so often to rummage through the belongings of couple dead bodies that are in the alleys.

And she doesn't mean to, but she sees yellow.

Not the pale, white-blond of Jessie's hair when it's matted after missions. Not the dirty tufts she sees on the scarce fair haired denizens below the plate.

Nor the fluorescence that lights her little family when they meet beneath the world to plot attacks, which is coupled with the hum of mako coursing through the currents in her bar

She sees gold, lolling back, matted, and slightly darker in places where it's resting in one of the sporadic puddles at the base of the train's steps.

Cloud.

Her pulse catches midway between her heart and mind, stopping the blood flow cold, and she can't open her mouth to keep breathing for the man it might be and this hope that's randomly fallen into her life. Shiva, she hopes it's true-blue, full-fledged hope.

She jogs over, passing into the harsh glow that lights the tracks for passengers who take the night trains. And she's sure it's him. She smiles and hauls him up onto her back to carry him home.

When Tifa kicks open the door, Barret is less than pleased. He had been waiting up for her ("With some of my alcohol, huh?" she remarks tartly), and upon seeing the unconscious man on her back exclaims a series of profanities and a very loud, "There's a child here, woman! I told you to kick the asses of the persistent ones, not bring them home!"

But she pays no mind to that, and simply tells Barret to help her get him upstairs.

In her tiny home, she tries to mend the wounds on him ("No, Barret, we are not using the kitchen utensils to stitch him up! We eat with those, and that's unsanitary!"). What surprises her is just how many there are. It's well into the night by now, and he's leaked some blood onto her already worn sheets. But she can't help but thread her fingers through his dirty hair, and wipe the dried, dark red blood and grim from his face.

And she can't help but notice the odd puncture wounds on his neck, back, and arms—all seeming to be apart of a carefully laid out plan—or the identical, scarred slits on his back and stomach, each directly across from each other. She has not idea what he's been through, but Tifa starts to hope he might be as home as she is. Which isn't much, but it could be something.

In the early hours of the morning, she's up washing tables while he sleeps. Tifa checks her stock and nearly jumps out of her skin when she hears a distinct _thunk_…_clunk_…and groans of aches and pains _walking_ upstairs. She bolts to the second floor, and she sees him slumping down the hall in unsteady, diagonal patterns, until his legs seem to give out, and he crashes in the wall and is still.

Tifa kneels next to him. His body gives a few spasms, and he utters a few spurts of incoherent babbles. She doesn't know what else to do with him but hold his head steady and smile as his barely open eyes flicker between her face and the wall behind her head.

"Hey, you." He blinks, possibly in recognition of her words, she's not sure at the moment. So she says the only thing that makes any miniscule amount of sense in this odd situation, the only thing she wanted to hear when she was in a strange place with no past or future in sight.

"Welcome home. I'm going to help you. We'll fix this. It'll be better than slumping up against a wall all alone. Alright?" She throws one of his arms around her shoulders and begins to drag him back towards bed.

"…if…a….Teef…" he murmurs, and she grins so wide that she's afraid her face might split. She can't remember what it's like to be surprised by the past, but if this is it, it's damn good. So she nods.

"Yeah, Tifa, Cloud. Tifa."

She tucks him back under the covers, noticing that a couple wounds have split open, but a few more blood stains on her bed won't kill her. And for the first time in five years, she finds that she can believe her own words of optimism and not despise the utter hypocrisy of seeing a bright future.

**To Whom It May Concern: I was away at a university for a few weeks doing independent study, so forgive the prolonged period with no update. For those of you who have seen ****Grave of the Fireflies**** written and directed by Isao Takahata, I've always imagined the scene in which Tifa finds Cloud at the train station to resemble Seita's situation in the opening scene of the film, in that he's filthy, emaciated, and unresponsive. I hope I have not taken up your time with mindless babbles that mean nothing. I hope this is worth the read.**

**Read and review, if you feel so inclined. I can take the flames, but constructive criticism is lovely too.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: This took a very, very long time to write (about three months). I apologize for the delay, but I'm a working student whose time is consumed by all her obligations. I hope this was worth the wait (if any of you were waiting that is). Also, a special thanks to all those who read and reviewed the last chapter because, truly, the reviews make all the time spent writing worth it.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but my words. The characters and world belong to Square-Enix.**

In the expanse of a month, he's quiet. Tifa is sure of that much amidst the drawn out silences and eerie nostalgia of his boots creaking against the floor above her head.

She moves about the bar, turning empty chairs onto tables and flipping the small sign on the door to "CLOSED", and listens to the murmurs from the base below as they creep through the floorboard and break the quiet that she's become accustomed to past midnight. Barret's angry voice rattles the metal grates of the vents.

"—no, _you_ listen, _boy_, or I swear I'll—"

"You'll _what?_ Not like this here is a _gold mine_ operation to stick aro—"

Tutting tiredly and rolling her eyes, one powerful stomp of her foot shakes the foundation of bar, and everything is quiet.

A couple glasses clink, and the droning of secret elevator brings a fuming Barret up into the bar. He growls, paces furiously to and from the bar top, and points one shaking finger at her. He starts to open his mouth, but she's beat him to it, raising her hands to reach out and hold his shoulders for comfort.

"Barret, just wait. Everything's oka—"

"_Do_ something about 'im," he seethes "Or I'll fill 'is _empty_, _spiky_ head with _lead_." He stomps off towards the stairs, and Jessie, who—standing near the pinball machine shyly—Tifa had never noticed to be there, gives a tired shrug of her shoulders and quietly meanders off to bed.

Tifa slumps—back hunched painfully and joints creaking with protest—and wrings the bar rag in her hands.

They hate him. Well, Barret does, she knows, while Biggs holds a sort of apathy towards the ex-SOLDIER, and Jessie and Wedge are just infatuated with his taciturn air. None of it is entirely unwarranted. Much to her frustration and chagrin, he doesn't give a damn about Barret's "principles" as a leader, and she catches Jessie's faint blushes whenever he walks in the room.

Her forehead wrinkles; not that she cares.

Glancing around the bar as the shuffling sounds of her friends' footsteps above recede, her muscles finally give in to the ache of the long day, and she sinks to the ground behind the counter. Slowly, she closes her eyes.

There's a realization itching the base of her skull, reminding her that some tug of her heart is still pining for the normalcy that was supposed to settle in when they made this makeshift family. She was going to make Barret calmer in time. Jessie would be some form of female friendship, and she would have bought Marlene that porcelain butterfly they saw in the shop window months ago.

But, she shouldn't complain, not even in her head. There's not one person in this whole, wretched city that doesn't have scabs, dirt coating their legs or puffy, purple bags beneath their eyes. All she hates is the aches: throbs of her friends' guilt and sadness, scar that burns her ribs at night, roars of the metal gears in the plate overhead.

She pinches her brow. Wedge's snores rattle the vents, and she reaches in one of the cabinets next to her to pull out a drink.

She hears the familiar _grind_ of the elevator again along with the _thump _of steel-toed boots on the floor. He doesn't see her, and everything's quiet again. So quiet that she can listen to his already shallow, silent breathing stop, causing her to assume that he's gone to bed. She pops the beer cap off with a bottle opener, and takes a healthy gulp.

Until he's right next to her, hovering and looking down with that _blue_ stare that startles her and makes her shiver. She can't find her voice. He still makes her feel painfully shy. All that she can manage is standing up awkwardly and a cocked eyebrow in question.

"Aren't you too young to drink?" he asks.

"Aren't you too old to throw fits?" Her voice wavers, but the retort still finds its mark. His brow furrows.

"Touché."

She hums in agreement and an awkward silence settles between them. He shuffles from one foot to the other, face somehow keeping into passive visage while she can see the tension in the way he moves, and a faint swell of blood settles in her cheeks. He clears his throat, only managing to make the air tenser.

He open and closes his mouth slightly, making no noise but reminding her of a fish. Something squeaks in the back of her throat and her forefinger traces to outline of the bottle's label unconsciously. Vaguely, she remembers that this is the first, real, solitary conversation that they've had in a week.

"Scouting tomorrow morning." His voice is gruff as gravel. "Northern reactor."

Surprised, she chokes on a bit of alcohol and sputters, spraying little flecks onto the arms he's crossed over his chest.

"_Tomorrow?_"

Passive once more, he nods. "Tomorrow."

Her eyes narrows and her gaze fixates on the ceiling above them, and she tosses her mostly full bottle, admittedly rather harshly, into the nearby sink. It shatters, and for the first time, she could almost swear she feels him flinch.

"Everyone is _exhausted_," she murmurs venomously. "What's he _thinking?_ We just tried for Reactor 3 _last night_. Shinra is going to be on edge and _find_ us—"

"Tifa."

"—and there's guards _all over_ the northern reactor. Wedge can _barely_ manage for himself, and if we're too tired to defend any—"

"Tifa."

"—one let alone ourselves, we'll all wind up _dead_, and then what—"

"_Tifa._"

Embarrassed, her cheeks flush and she shudders. "I'm…I'll…Barret, I'm going to go get Barret."

She despises how shy he makes her. But, abruptly moving around him and taking three steps at a time up the stairs, it's familiar and normal. Heart torn between the fading memory of the blushing girl in a blue dress and the rationale of the calluses on her knuckles, she rubs the pink from her cheeks, sets a scowl on her brow, and knocks on Barret's door.

* * *

When the monsters flicker through his membrane and he can practically feel s blade sawing his eyes apart, Cloud sweats and screams in his sleep. Dirty fingernails scratch the fabric of the couch that he's sleeping on, and beneath his twitching lids, he can hear the plinking of bullet shells in an unfamiliar desert heat.

A dull sun hangs overhead, and he's crawling towards a flock of Shinra guards while someone he can't remember rushes by him, shouting like a madman and brandishing a massive blade high in the air. They're surrounded, and Cloud knows this isn't right, isn't real, but it's terrifying all the same. Shakily, he stands, bit by bit and knee by knee, and turns to face the enemy at his back.

A Shinra dog grips his shoulder, Cloud's eyes—a wild, unfocused blue-green—dilate, and he wrings the wrist of whoever was foolish enough to touch him. Much to his surprise, it screams a grunt and gasp of pain that's low but still distinctly feminine.

He's awake, and his surroundings rush in. The alcoholic scent of the bar, the torn upholstery of the couch he's on, that one loose floorboard that everyone always trips over, and Tifa—wincing in pain and corners of her eyes watering slightly—just trying to help and now locked in his panicked grip.

"Cloud…" her voice is strained and her eyes make him wonder if she's afraid of him. "Cloud…it's just me. Don't be afraid of me, _please_."

Cornered life a animal, he pushes her wrist away like it's on fire. Goddamn her and her obsessive need to wander the bar in the morning, just waiting for someone to lose their head and need comfort, but he thought she knew by now that contact between them was limited to just words.

Her eyes widen in surprise and embarrassment. "Sorry," she murmurs, gaze still locked with his. "I heard you. I was just up, and I thought…"

He nods and watches as she lightly rubs the pain out of her wrist. Another awkward silence settles between them, and he moves off the couch, leaving her frozen and crouching next to the empty space. He walks towards the back door and pauses at the frame.

"Go to bed," he mumbles and doesn't wait for her answer.

A couple hours later, he creeps his way back into the house and hovers outside her door. He traces the frame with his hands, and his ears prick at the sound of her breathing creeping under the slit near the floor.

Closing his eyes and resting his forehead on the wood, he wishes he was braver, better. He whispers his thank you and goes to sit in the corner of the bar until Barret wakes every fiber of the bar—"Up you's all! We got Shinra lackeys to beat!"—and they're on one of the trains, rattling down the tracks with hearts hammering in their chests and adrenaline pumping in their veins.

He's sitting in the back, arms crossed over his chest and listening to Barret bicker with Jessie about the reactor's layout, when he starts watching her out of the corner of his eye, a habit he's picked up in the span of a month. Noticing the way she only smiles when someone stares her in the face and the tension flickering on her face when her torso twists. He has memories of holding her in Nibeliheim—_"You guys came here just for an investigation, right_?"—but there's black hair falling in his face.

He rubs his forehead, and her eyes catch his for a moment before she blushes and looks away. Some of her hair falls over her shoulder, and he watches the motion with fascination.

Sometimes she's afraid of him but tries to hid it by pulling those pretty, pink lips into a smile.

Sometimes she hates him, just like Barret, just like Shin-Ra, because he's failing all the faith she seems to have in him and he hears the nightmares—_"I hate it: Shinra, SOLDIER, and you too. I hate it all!"—_she has at night but never comes to her.

"_No_, Spike." He never noticed Barret standing in front of him. The massive man points his gun-arm in Cloud's face, and jerks his head towards Tifa, whose staring at the negative space in front of her, off in her own world.

Cloud raises one pale eyebrow. "What?"

Barret scoffs. "You 'eard me: _no_. Hurt the lil' miss and _die_." When Cloud makes no response, Barret growls and stands him up by his collar. "This here's our stop. You're staying outside on guard. _No_ funny business. _No_ screwin' us over, _got it?_"

A confident, cocky swell causes Cloud to smirk, frustrating Barret and amusing Cloud to no end. "Crystal."

Cautiously, they creep through the reactor and find it to be eerily empty. Wedge is on edge, and Jessie's breathing is loud enough to give them all away. The metallic rooms are even darker than the perpetual black under the plate, and great chords and wires run mako as bright as his eyes through the halls. It's in tight, claustrophobic situations that his old, heightened senses kick in, and he realizes the clear sheen of nervous sweat coating Biggs's brow, or that Tifa breathes like a fugitive: so quiet yet rapid that it's like a maddening staccato ticking in his mind.

Silver and green starts to haze the corners of his eyes, drawing him briefly into his memories, and a revolver clicks behind them.

Ten guards open fire to Barret's frantic commands—"_Fight_, come on!"—and they take cover behind the massive, mako machines littering the stairwells. Cloud swings his sword out and the bullets make slight _plinks_ on the metal.

He's already hacked a guard that had been lurking behind Jessie's back to pieces when he turns and finds himself face to face with a shaking cadet. The kid is young, can't be more than sixteen, and fumbles to hold an oversized machine gun in his underdeveloped arms.

"_Run, now_," Cloud whispers. The cadet's eyes widen slightly, causing Cloud's blood to boil at the boys inability to comprehend the situation. "You're young. _Go, now_!"

The teenager nods, and bolts into the shadows, letting Cloud turn his attention back to the battle.

He hears a _whap_ and a pained grunt behind him and finds Tifa covering his back and hovering over an unconscious guard. Just as she smiles, a siren sounds overhead and a red alert lights the hallway in patterned flickers, casting eerie shadows upon them all and brightening the red in her eyes.

"_Dammit_," Barret hisses. "Reinforcements!" Looking around at their worried faces and taking in Biggs's bleeding arm, he growls and decides. "_Run_! We can do this another day, but only if we live!"

They retreat the way that they all came, their own footsteps masked by the regimented drum of those of the Shinra guards echoing through the halls.

But something goes wrong. Just as they see the red light of the exit sign at the end of the hall, two distinct _cracks_ reverberate in the silence, a bullet clips Biggs's shoulder, another Tifa's side.

A roar of fury rips the scene in half. Cloud can't tell if it's Barret or his own. All that he sees is that same cadet that he gave a chance to escape holding that same shaking machine gun and quivering in his goddamn, Shinra standard boots. Before he can run the kid through with his sword, Jessie shoots a few well-aimed, adrenaline filled shots through the teen's skull, and the kid falls.

The realization of what's happened rushes into them all. Biggs is clutching his chest and making frenzied, animalistic sounds of pain, as Tifa pushes down weakly on his wound with that bar rag she has out of habit. She's putting pressure on her own wound at the same time. They both slump from exertion and blood loss. Barret scoops Tifa up in his arms while Wedge slings Biggs's body over his shoulder.

Cloud knows this is neither the time nor the place, but he can't help but mentally mull over how small Tifa is in Barret's arms or how corpse-like Biggs is at that moment.

They run. The red lights are still sounding overhead. The thrum of the regiment is getting closer. Once outside, a quick, non-verbal exchange between Barret and Cloud formulates a plan. Barret and Wedge run down one of the alleys towards Seventh Heaven.

Cloud and Jessie spend two hours running all over Midgar until the guards give up the chase, and they're followed no more.

* * *

By the time Cloud and Jessie arrive at the bar, it's almost night in the afternoon, and Barrets already cleared out the cash register to buy off the doctor they needed to heal Biggs and Tifa.

Cloud takes the watch over Tifa, much to Barret's chagrin. The room is dark and smells like dust, and he can see her small form lying on its stomach, one side of her tank top bloody.

Rubbing the base of his skull, he lets out a furious growl at his inability to protect her, protect anyone on such a basic mission. The only reason he joined the fucking group was because she saved him, took him in, and what else could be done to repay the kindness.

Silver and green flash before his eyes, and the words that are pushing him to save her echo in his head even if he can't remember if they were meant for him in the end.

_I hate it: Shinra, SOLDIER, and you too. I hate it all!_

He stares at her for hours from a chair by her bedside until he's lulled to loose muscles by the slight scent of her hair that he can catch from the close proximity. For the first time in over a day, he sleeps, despite the cold ache of failure in his chest.

He dreams of Marlene crying, Barret rotting, and Tifa burning. And nothing could ever suffice that fear in his heart.

**To Whom It May Concern: If anyone didn't understand Cloud's too-young-to-drink quip: Tifa's twenty. The legal drinking age is 21 in my mind. I am American, and that's how it is here. Sorry for any confusion. Hopefully, this was worth your time. If not, feel free to wish a pox on my household. Or something like that.**

**Read and review, if you feel so inclined. I can take the flames, but constructive criticism is lovely too.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: My apologies for the delay, but this chapter was extremely difficult to write. I've been in India for three weeks and nowhere near an internet connection, let alone a computer. Now, I'm in Ireland visiting the family. It's cold. Though the thought of anyone awaiting this update with bated breath is a major stretch, I attempted to be a tad prompter than I've previously been. And I failed, unfortunately. Many thanks to those who reviewed the last chapter: mom calling, Kisdota-The Freak Gamer, sage, Milvus, vLuna, PeAceLovEr 12, zodious, and kitsune13. Really, the reviews make this worth it. Without them, I would essentially be talking to myself. And that's just sad.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but my words. The characters, world, and borrowed bits of dialogue belong to Square-Enix.**

What seems like years of soft murmurs, and he turns his head into the warm throb of her palm. A dull pulse—aching and eerie—begins in the bend of his knees, the base of his skull, and the chords of his hands, and the first thing he sees is one long, soft curl just brushing the tip of his nose.

And his blood stops—halting as if it was a bated breath and flushed with a familiarity that he can't quite place—at the sight of the girl above him cooing curious hello-hellos as he begins to focus.

"You _okay_?" He snaps a crick in his neck, and the light filtering in from the hole above him refracts in the corners of his eyes. "This is a _church_…in the Sector 5 slums."

Teeth gritting over the split in his lip, he watches debris and flakes of metal trail from above, and the girl keeps her palm to his cheek, tilting her head so that a ripple of caramel gold in the sunlight runs along the braid at her back.

She laughs a soft tintinnabulation of bells not even strong enough to echo or break the silence.

"You suddenly fell on top of me," she grins. "You really gave me a scare."

He nods, and her hand recoils when she notices him watching it. She must think he's stupid, because he can't speak, can't flinch at the human contact he'd so long despised. There's no electricity; nothing shocking his systems and pushing him back. The hum by his ear—_"So, you're the one that saved me?"_—is only enough to whirr his mind back into motion—_"No, not really. All I did was, 'Hello!'"_—and give him the capacity to speak.

"…I came crashing down?" A memory flutters through his mind, one of clutching onto a sharp jut of steel in the reactor, red alert flashing overhead, grind of Barret's gun as it loaded—_" Barret! Can't you do something!"_—muscles straining to lift himself up—"_Please, don't die!"—_purple patches beginning on her collar from a mission a few days ago—_"There's still so much I have to—"_

"The roof and the flower bed must have broken your fall." Her voice snaps him out of his reverie, and he's surprised to see that she's looking up at the mess he's made, an odd furrow on her brow, eyes distant, and the pad of her thumb rubbing her bottom lip absentmindedly. And all he can think about is how smooth and unblemished her knuckles are, the peculiar softness of tops of her palms, and how the only rough patch that he can find are the very tips of her fingers; a sign that she's been burrowing her nails in the dirt for years.

She tucks that one shiny ringlet behind her ear, straightens, and plants her hands on her hips, a wry smile playing on her lips. "You're lucky."

_Funny_, he thinks, _but you're the first person to say that in a long time_.

"Flower bed…" he digs his heel into an already crushed flower, little pebbles caving in around the stem like a tomb. "Is this yours?" He tugs out a few petals caught in his hair.

"Sorry about that," he promises, eyes narrowed slightly to quell the hum crawling up his scalp.

She watches his mouth, smiling and clasping her hands behind her back like a school girl. "They say you can't grow grass or flowers in Midgar." She knells down and starts to pick out the flower he's buried with his boot. "But for some reason, the flowers have no problem blooming here."

His knees crook towards her, but his fingers twitch without direction. He's never been in this sector and won't be able to find his way back to the bar amongst unfamiliar grime and alleys.

"I love it here." He won't meet her eyes—_"An angel?"_—so he mulls over the fact that every flower he had crushed with his body when he fell is now in full bloom.

"Say," she quips, pretty teeth gleaming. "We don't even know each other's names!" There's dirt is the pores of her outstretched hand, and the just calloused fingertips scratch his wrist when she grabs it.

"My name is"—_"No such luck. I'm Aerith!"—_"Aerith, the flower girl. Nice to meet you."

His smile shakes, the corners of his lips twitching as he can't find the spark in her touch that the quake in his belly—the whisper now creeping along his brow—tells him to.

"The name's Cloud," he grins, a stomach churning swell of home and confidence as an oddly familiar blush colors her cheeks. The grip that she has on his hand softens to a gentle grasp swaying between them, but he can't help notice the way her eyes never meet his smile and only trail the SOLDIER standard insignia on his chest.

* * *

Reno burrows the butt of his cigarette into Aerith's flowers, and she screams. From their place running amongst the rafters, Cloud harshly pulls the flower girl along by her wrist, frustrated with how easily her focus drifts when there's Shinra recruits at their backs and bullets splitting the already unstable, aged wood at their feet.

"_Aerith_," he pleads. "_Aerith_, it's fine. We have to go, _now_." They're mere feet from the gaping hole in the roof of the church, and he can get her out of here, keep her safe, go back to the bar if she'll just listen and not worry about the damn flowers.

But, she's seething, and something tells him that her temper isn't as passive as the pink dress and pretty eyes made him believe. Reno lights another cigarette; the fire at the end of his mouth sparks, little red-hot flakes falling from the end. The tobacco coils up in the air—silhouetted dark and grey in the sunlight—and it dissipates just before it reaches their feet.

"_Normally, people would be careful around flowers!"_

A twitch runs through Cloud's veins, because her mouth was closed when he heard her say that, and the voice was too high and young to belong to her now. He blinks, grabs her waist, and lifts her out onto the roof.

It's hours later, when he's standing in her kitchen that smells like cinnamon and Elmyra is cleaning a cut on his throat with a rag, that he starts to jitter in his boots. Aerith watching him, green eyes crinkling, adrenaline in the pulse, and he can't help but feel ashamed when the heat creeping up his neck doesn't make him smile.

Elmyra leaves with a quiet question in her eyes, tracing the SOLDIER emblem with a long glance just as Aerith had before. The house smells too much like spice and oak and birch that he _knows_ he shouldn't be able to find anywhere in the slums. He fiddles with the fastener on one leather glove.

"So, what are you going to do now?" She has a habit of staring, and her hands are clasped together like a pray. And, despite the pleasant unease he feels around her that he can't quite understand, he takes a step towards the door.

"…is…Sector 7 far from here?" God, he feels awful for thinking about how her pretty hands won't fit the lines of his palm. It's not right. It's just not right. That pulse in his skull ebbs harder and harder until it's like landmine after landmine going off in his head. He feels good near her. The twisting in his blood is good. It's—

"Tifa's bar…I want to go to Tifa's bar."

The green in her eyes darkens, and it's her turn to shake with hesitance.

"Tifa is…a _girl_?" He thinks about the flower patch just outside and remembers the blue bonnets and mint his mother grew in a garden by the Lockhart's fence. Aerith's face is suddenly much closer than he realized, and her strange mix of concern and interest leaves his mind staled as he leans away from her oddly accusing gaze.

"Yeah…" he mumbles. She smells like flower pollen and slum dirt, and his jaw aches in faint recognition.

She nods and hums faintly. "A girl…_friend_?"

His pupils dilate, and Cloud thinks of alcohol, pinball, Marlene tugging his hair, red, chapped upper lip, nightmare bumps on his neck, tremors from her touch, and the nicks, scars, and splinters on Tifa's hands.

"No, no!…._no_…" He shouts, louder than he meant to, and Aerith's rolling her eyes as she murmurs through a smirk.

"Hee, hee, hee…you don't have to get _that_ upset!" She taps her chin in thought and makes a soft noise in the back of her throat. "Let's see…Sector 7? I'll show you the way!"

Vaguely, he registers that he might be saying something protective and gruff, but he likes her company. The way her neck curves into a pale cheek and the pretty hands smoothing a crease in her dress remind him of his mother and the way she used to soften the worry lines on his brow whenever he would come home, blood on his cheeks and bruise around his eye.

She surprises him, infuriates him, and distracts him from matters at hand. He can't help but call her selfish and stubborn for her own gain and pride when she follows him on his way to the Sector 7 slums. He's furious when her presence ignites the crawling and writhing pain in his neck and eyes that had slowly subsided the further he was from her.

And later—atop one of the climbing gyms of an abandoned playground, slide in front of him ending in Shinra muck, and broken swing set clanking in the metallic gusts coming from the plate above—the white noise is so deafening in his head that Cloud can barely make out her face or the movement of her mouth when she begins to ask him about his past.

"My rank?" She looks hazy even though he knows that she's right in front of him, brown hair gaining a sheen of silver and pupils slitting while a malice sinks into Cloud's stomach. He opens his mouth and he's almost certain that he'll vomit if he tries to answer.

The white noise cuts out. She smiles sadly. "Just the same as him." Cloud tilts his head and wonders if he answered her.

"Same as who?"

"My first—_"I want just one thing"_—boyfriend." He's having the most peculiar daydream: his knuckles are bigger, the air is back out of his chest like—_"Yeah, how much is that?"_—that first time he saw Tifa tugging a splinter from Marlene's thumb or—_"Here me out!...there are 23 little luxuries"_—the splintered memory he has of blood dripping down a blade, onto his forearms, and run through someone whose hand is scrapping the glass of a tank leaking mako and crying for a mother. She's still talking; he must be too.

"It doesn't really matter," she murmurs, rubbing her bottom lip like she's forgotten he's there. There's a grinding of metal behind them, and he turns to see a ridiculous red carriage clanking by the playground.

The electricity is back, pulsing in his fingertips, and the clicks and whirs in his mind focus on…

"Huh? Hey…"—_"But, you probably won't remember."_—"back there." He moves fast, Aerith's curls brushing his forearms as he stands, and calls out:

"Tifa!"

Her eyes widen and dart between his worried glare and Aerith's curious smile. He hasn't seen her in a dress in seven years, and he always liked her in blue. He jumps down from the climbing gym, Aerith at his back.

"_There's only one thing"_—"Tifa!"—_"I want most."_

Aerith's saying something, and he's pushing her back along with the white noise now roaring in his head.

He tries to widen his eyes and keep track of her, because she probably thought him to be dead, and she'll only believe that he's there if he can hold their gaze steady and see her, but the whiteness is cutting in and out until, in a blink, she's gone.

"_I want to spend more time with you."_

Aerith is out in front and running after the quickly disappearing carriage, and Cloud moves. He follows the flower pollen scent, and the lights turn from fluorescent to flickering neon as they enter to hub of Wall Market.

And in the red, blues, flashing signs, and grime, he just hopes they can find their way home.

* * *

For two days, he'd been dead to them.

In their tiny headquarters late at night, she had spit out every excuse she could think of to lead a mission, without her teammates if she had to, to find her friend: that Shinra would find the corpse and somehow track the death to AVALANCHE, that they couldn't leave his cadaver to mutilation and burial in one of the sewers of the city, that he was worth more than that.

Barret had sworn that she'd lost her mind, holding her with one massive arm as she'd snarled—_"Let me go! We can't leave him to rot! I can't leave him one more time!"_—and pleaded with him to at least let her go find the body. Jessie, hand muffling her sobbing breaths and curled up in a corner of the cellar, was too traumatized by the gravity of the situation and the reality that this was no longer a hero's story to offer any assistance. Biggs curled him arm around Wedge and held the great man as he'd cried. They had lost their first teammate; they all had.

Moreover, Tifa had managed to terrify Marlene last night when she had blackened Barret's eye as he'd wrestled her to the ground when she tried to sneak out after they'd all gone to bed.

In the end and standing under the dimming bulb hanging above the bar top—rubbing the rough, reddened, scaly skin beneath her eyes—she recognized her irrational behavior and failure. She had failed to comfort her friends when they were crying from the loss and the closing in of Shinra around their meager organization. She had failed Marlene, who, too frightened of the young woman after the outburst, had left a slightly crumpled drawing of a heart on the corner of the bar and promptly ran away before Tifa could thank her.

And she had failed Cloud, now dead for a second time. His corpse would either rot amidst the jagged metal and mutated mako beneath the reactor, or Shinra would find him and display his body as a trophy, a triumph against the terrorists of the city, a sign of Shinra's love for and protection of the people of Midgar.

Darker thoughts, too, had whispered. She'd dreamed of him skinned and hanging from meat hooks in Shinra laboratories. The odd inkling had been…disturbing, and she'd wondered where the idea could have come from.

But now he's kneeling at the back of an alley—cursing Corneo for pulling that trap door on them—and there's a broken sewer grate digging into the still healing bullet wound at her side. Her stomach clenches; she'd always hated sewers. She doesn't give a damn that he spent _two, fucking days_ letting the team worry and letting her guilt fester and ache. His disregard is the very least of their problems.

There's hours until the reactors blow and every, single person she loves in this world is under that plate.

Cloud helps Aerith to her feet—a wet mop of curls clinging to her neck—and Tifa's throat tightens as she watches the sludge run around their feet and the street lights flickering in the distance.

"It's too late…" she murmurs, and Aerith brushes a bit of the residue from Tifa's cheek. "Marlene…Barret…the people of the slums…"

"Don't give up!" Aerith—all matted dress and pretty green eyes—quips while tugging at a strand of Tifa's hair. "Never give up hope! It's not easy to blow up a pillar, right?"

They both look to Cloud, whose clutching the base of his neck and watching Tifa rub a particularly painful blister on her palm.

The alley ways blur behind them as the trio darts through grates and broken chain link edges into the scum and grease of the underground. And when she's standing in a graveyard of twisting metal and broken train tracks, Tifa can't help but fear the paralysis wrapping up her legs like the way she braids Marlene's hair.

Everything's meshed together and strange. Stranger than the way a small fire kindling near the entrance of Sector 7 makes the scar on her chest prickle, or even the harsh luminescence practically pulsing in Cloud's eyes. People just seem to trickle out of cracks between the shanty buildings like they're bacteria just multiplying without end. Tifa calls to Aerith to keep moving, keep up, don't stop unless—

"Wedge! Wedge!"

His bandana is askew and splotched at the back of his neck with little, dark patches barely noticeable to the naked eye. Cloud's there, one knee in the dirt and the other pillowing Wedge's head. Aerith looks like she can't decide whether to throw up or just cry, and Tifa realizes that she's got one gloved hand hovering out in front of her as if just stretching out a bit and placing her palm on Wedge could remedy the wound.

"Cloud…you remembered…my name…" Wedge is grinning just as wide as the day Tifa met him. "Barret's up top…help him…"

Her eyes trail over the silhouette of Wedge's body, and everything's moving out of sync. The way the crowd gathering around them twitches is too fast, too slow—like the broken record player that came with the bar when she bought it that could only repeat the chorus of one scratched up, old jazz record.

"An' Cloud…" The ex-SOLDIER braces one hand between Wedge's shoulders as if to steady his breathing. "Sorry, I wasn't any help…"

"_No…_" Tifa murmurs. "_No_, Wedge, _no_." She'll kill Cloud if he doesn't reassure this man who practically idolizes him that the poor guy's efforts weren't a waste.

But he doesn't, and the only flicker of emotion she sees is in the clenching of his jaw.

"I'm going up! Aerith! You watch after Wedge!" The flower girl nods—eyes widening from fear but dark with determination—and Tifa finds her voice.

"Aerith, do me a favor." The request sounds much too soft for the situation. "I have a bar called 'Seventh Heaven' in this neighborhood." She tosses a wistful glance over her shoulder down an alleyway towards home.

"There's a little girl named Marlene there…" Aerith's face softens and Tifa almost smiles knowing that the flower girl understands.

"Don't worry, I'll put her somewhere safe."

The vice on her heart loosens. She tugs her gloves tighter over her knuckles and turns towards the road to the fight.

**To Whom It May Concern: I felt that the story couldn't move anywhere without giving Aerith and the Sector Seven incident the attention they deserve. Aerith's character is fascinating, and I've found that she's one of the hardest characters to write in canon with her complexity. And the Sector Seven incident had too much emotion to ignore. Unfortunately, I can't even get the incident into one chapter. Too much emotion. So, give me a little bit, and we can finally get out of Midgar!**

**Ideally, this read has been worth your time. If not, may a banshee from the nearby bog drive me mad or eat me or whatever it is banshees do.**

**Read and review, if you feel so inclined. I can take the flames, but constructive criticism is lovely too.**


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